Republican efforts to block certain North Carolina voters from participating in this year’s election have so far been thwarted by federal and state courts.

The North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee expected approximately 225,000 registered voters to be removed from the state’s rolls, or at least required to cast provisional ballots. A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit this week made their search seem even less likely to succeed.

The case began in state court, but the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Democratic National Committee managed to have the matter moved to federal court.

A Trump-appointed federal district court judge, Richard Myers II, had dismissed one of the GOP’s claims but returned a remaining constitutional claim to the state court for further consideration. The Fourth Circuit vacated the case and returned it to Myers.

In their original complaint, filed in late August, the NCGOP and RNC argued that the state elections board violated federal law and the state constitution by failing to remove 225,000 voters who had registered with a defective form.

The outdated form requested, but did not require, the applicant to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, information required by federal law. The state elections board has since updated registration forms.

As for the records in question, the elections board determined that voters could not be removed from the rolls so close to this year’s election, as federal law prohibits. Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, there is a 90-day “quiet period” before elections during which voters cannot be removed from the rolls.

Additionally, the board of elections said voters would have to provide such identifying information when, for example, requesting an absentee ballot, and would be required to provide acceptable forms of photo identification when voting by mail or in person.

The Republican plaintiffs also claimed that the state elections board violated the North Carolina Constitution’s equal rights protections by failing to remove 225,000 registered voters or requiring them to vote this year with provisional ballots.

Meanwhile, a North Carolina appeals court panel dismissed a republican demand focusing on absentee ballots submitted by eligible voters abroad who never lived in the state.

The lawsuit is part of a legal strategy devised by the RNC and deployed to other states on the battlefield.